n. (law) a dwelling house and its adjacent buildings and the adjacent land used by the household

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman mesuage, probably from Late Latin messuagium, probably ultimately from Latin mansio or mansus.

Examples

Glendinning is supposed to have inhabited, the head of the Allen, about five miles above its junction with the Tweed, shows three ruins of Border houses, belonging to different proprietors, and each, from the desire of mutual support so natural to troublesome times, situated at the extremity of the property of which it is the principal messuage.

Huge triangular piles of planks are also reared in different parts of the devoted messuage; and a little group of trees, that still grace the eastern end, which rises in a gentle ascent, have just received warning to quit, expressed by a daub of white paint, and are to give place to a curious grove of chimneys.

Witness said she had no business to come again, after this Kitty Kelly desired Witness to make some Socks for the Defd., which Wit. accordingly did and carried them to Defd. who gave her Three shillings and Six pence for a pair of the socks and told her, she might get whatever she wanted, for the money in the shop, Defd. also asked Wit. if Kitty Kelly had delivered her any messuage.

In from the life of the old messuage, came a touch of the barbaric; weird minor songs that belonged with the hot throb of the African tom-tom floated in through the deep windows, and strangely mingled with the thin tinkle of the harpsichord and the tender strains of an old English ballad.

Perceye's chantry again, which Dugdale considered the oldest (though he does not give the date) was endowed in 1350 with six messuages, one shop, six acres of land and 40s. rent, all lying in Coventry, to which in 1407 William Botoner and others, added a messuage and twenty-four acres of land in the city for another priest.

"Except," said Charles, "that it is usual to offer one's guests the most comfortable arm-chair in the messuage and not to eat all the fattest strawberries oneself, I can't say that I do;" and he fluffed a second mashie pitch with his cigar ash well short of the drawing-room fender.

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""The Queen was not aware of it either," replied Paytim. "Her brother poisoned her and seized control of the Crimson Messuage. He has impertinently invited me to attend his coronoation as Paeolina the Twenty-Ninth.""

"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 221 of Errantry: Strange Stories